ANNUAL REPORT 2008.
Approved of by the board of our foundation in their meeting of 31 October 2009.
PREFACE
For our foundation 2008 was a hectic year. To maintain our foundation and its museum profound changes are necessary. Dr.Rudi Hessel will take care of a number of collections. Some other collections we will have to dispose off, like the recent shells and the plio/pleistocene of Florida. Next year we will let you know how things turned out.
This year there were collection trips to France and to Hungary. There are now about 4000 pictures on our website, wich takes now more then 500 MB.
Our educational leaflet is available in Dutch, English and French.
As in previous years the foundation is included in the city guide of Utrecht and in the so
called "Kidsgids". In 2008 there where 4845 visitors on our site, counted by monthly unicity.
The shell we choose as a logo for our foudation, Gisortia coombii, has been used in a scientific publication about this species by Mr Jean-Michel Pacaud
(Cossmanniana tome 12, numéro 1-4, 1-45, 2008)
COLLECTIONS
The "Shell of the Year" is Amaea bowerbankii (size 50 mm) found by Dr. R.Hessel in the Palaeocene (Thanetian)
of the Paris Basin.
On December 31st 2008, there were 54.899 records in our database containing 369.576 specimen.
Compared with 2007 a growth with 448 records and 6.021 specimen.
The effective display area in our 78 showcases amounts to 94 m²,
The storage capacity of our drawers is 336 m² in 3470 drawers.
HOUSING
The foundation is housed in Utrecht in the premises at the Kievitdwarsstraat 15.
The following accommodation is available here:
- a modest laboratory to clean and preserve fossil shells (12,5 m²)
- two rooms for displaying fossil shells (44,8 m² and 7 m²)
- a basement for displaying miscellaneous fossils (43 m²)
- a cellar for storage of surplus shells (6,7 m²)
- a room for displaying recent shells (29,4 m²)
- a small room for storage of materials (4,5 m²)
All in all we now have 148 m² floor space not counting the space needed for archive and library, wich are in the home of our director.
EQUIPMENT, FURNITURE AND MATERIALS
Nothing changed this year.
LIBRARY
A small library for naming shells and educational purposes is
available. We can't lend books to the public but give assistance
whenever possible. Our library now contains 1.091 titles (growth 5).
CONTACT
Our foundation can be reached at the following E-mail address:
fossil.shell.museum@xs4all.nl
Our homepage :
http://www.fossilshells.nl/
Our website exceeded the allowed 500 MB, so now we have an upgrade to 1000 MB.
We still have an option for the sitename internationalshellmuseum.nl
PLANS FOR 2009
We hope to make a collecting trip to France again. We also plan to work on upgrading our website.There will be severe changes in our organisation.
